Librarians should think of Yelp (yelp.com) as a kind of giant suggestion box hanging on the wall of the Internet. This web-based review service describes itself as "an online urban city guide that helps people find cool places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play, based on the informed opinions of a vibrant and active community of locals in the…

The lyrics from the Ervin Drake song made famous by Frank Sinatra, "It Was a Very Good Year," kept coming to mind in 2010, despite the economy. While the quantity of works produced declined, and publishers suffered along with everyone else, there was no diminution in quality. With reduced budgets for collections, librarians were forced to make…

Drupal is a PHP-and MySQL-based system for managing web sites, developed in 2000 and released in 2001 under the open GNU General Public License (GPL). It is modular, extensible, and scalable. In recent years, Drupal has gained a huge following within libraries as a content management system (CMS). Probably the best-known extension of Drupal in the…

On January 19, 2009, the day before his historic inauguration, President Obama and his wife, Michelle, commemorated Martin Luther King Day by volunteering for various community service projects around the Washington, DC, area. A record number of Americans also participated in the King Day of Service, joining in over 13,000 projects, more than…

Yoga and Pilates are everywhere these days, and it's no wonder. Innumerable medical studies have shown that yoga and Pilates not only help people improve their fitness levels and slim down but also help them to alleviate asthma symptoms, manage arthritis and carpel tunnel pain, decrease cardiovascular risk factors, and improve one's emotional…

Some people learn better through viewing and listening, and some people simply do not like to read. In this society, there seems to be a move away from text, or, at least text as people have defined in the past. Moreover, mobile devices such as laptops, PDAs, and cell phones make video and audio incredibly easy to imbibe. So how do libraries…

Over the past several years, Internet users have become accustomed to Web 2.0 and cloud computing-style applications. It's commonplace and even intuitive to drag and drop gadgets on personalized start pages, to comment on a Facebook post without reloading the page, and to compose and save documents through a web browser. The web paradigm has…

Predictions regarding how much traveling Americans will be doing this year and where they might go vary, but it is expected that many will cut back on what is increasingly considered a luxury. Even so, gasoline prices are down substantially from a year ago, the stronger dollar means better prices in Europe, and there are discounts in all areas of…

Over the last 15 years, the book review landscape has changed seismically. Reviewing is no longer centralized, with a few big voices leading the way, but fractured among numerous multifarious voices found mostly on the web. In turn, readers aren't playing the captive audience any more. Undone by economics, many traditional print sources have been…

The web site is a library's most important feature. Patrons use the web site for numerous functions, such as renewing materials, placing holds, requesting information, and accessing databases. The homepage is the place they turn to look up the hours, branch locations, policies, and events. Whether users are at work, at home, in a building, or on…

May 31, 2010, was Quit Facebook Day. But although only around 35,000 of the 500 million Facebook users pledged to quit Facebook on Memorial Day, there's a sense of unease stirring with the social network's strategy. Congress has called for Facebook to explain its stance on the collection and sharing of user information (see…

Summer is fast approaching, and it will soon be time to climb the mountains to get their good tidings, as naturalist John Muir put it. In other words, librarians must now prepare for the influx of patrons making weekend recreational and summer vacation plans by stocking up on books and other resources on the great outdoors. Outdoor recreational…

Every year, more and more reference sources go from print to online, from the stacks to the library's homepage. The librarians at Quinnipiac University's Arnold Bernhard Library in Hamden, Connecticut, realized that these subscriptions are more than the occasional web offering to supplement the library's mission. They have become an important…

The current economic crisis has naturally reached into one's pocket and made many people anxious about their own finances. As consumers ride out these treacherous times, where can they go to find advice on managing and paying down their debt, protecting their investments, incomes, and retirement plans, and applying for mortgages in a tight credit…

In this article, the author presents an interview with Brewster Kahle, leader of the Open Content Alliance (OCA). OCA book scan program is an alternative to Google's library project that aims to make books accessible online. In this interview, Kahle discusses his views on the challenges of getting books on the Web, on Google's library…